Floyd Grandon's Honor, Amanda Minnie Douglas [you can read anyone .TXT] 📗

settlement, and was on her way to America. A superbly handsome woman now, but Grandon had seen many another among charming society women. He was not in any sense a lady's man. His little taste of matrimony had left a bitter flavor in his mouth.

She admitted to herself that he was very distinguished looking. The slender fairness of youth was all outgrown. Compact, firm, supple, with about the right proportion of flesh, bronzed, with hair and beard darker than of yore, and that decisive aspect a man comes to have who learns by experience to rely upon his own judgment.

"I am on my way thither," he announced, in a crisp, business-like manner. "It is high time I returned home, though a man with no ties could spend his life amid the curiosities of the ancient civilizations. But my mother needs me, and I have a little girl in England."

"Ah?" with a faint lifting of the brows that indicated curiosity.

"I was married in India, but my wife died in England, where our child was born," he said briefly, not much given to mysteries. "An aunt has been keeping her. She must be about five," he adds more slowly.

Madame Lepelletier wondered a little about the marriage. Had the grief at his wife's death plunged him into African wilds?

They spent two or three days in London, and she decided to wait for the next steamer and go over with him, as he frankly admitted that he knew nothing about children, except as he had seen them run wild. So he despatched a letter home, recounting the chance meeting and announcing their return, little dreaming of the suspicions it might create.

Floyd Grandon found a lovely fairy awaiting him in the old Devonshire rectory. Tall for her age, exquisitely trained, possessing something better than her mother's infantile prettiness. Eyes of so dark a gray that in some lights they were black, and hair of a soft ripe-wheat tint, fine and abundant. But the soul and spirit in her face drew him toward her more than the personal loveliness. She was extremely shy at first, though she had been taught to expect papa, but the strangeness wore off presently.

They were very loth to give her up, and Mrs. Garth exacted a promise that in her girlhood she might have her again. But when they were fairly started on their journey Cecil was for a while inconsolable. Grandon was puzzled. She seemed such a strange, sudden gift that he knew not what to do. At Liverpool they met Madame Lepelletier, but all her tenderness was of no avail. Cecil did not cry now, but utterly refused to be comforted by this stranger.

It was to her father that she turned at last. That night she crept into his arms of her own accord, and sobbed softly on his shoulder.

"Can I never have Auntie Dora again?" she asked, pitifully.

"My little darling, in a long, long while. But there will be new aunties and a grandmamma."

"I don't want any one but just you." And she kissed him with a trembling eagerness that touched his heart. Suddenly a new and exquisite emotion thrilled him. This little morsel of humanity was all his. She had nothing in the world nearer, and there was no other soul to which he could lay entire claim.

After that she was a curious study to him. Gentle, yet in some respects firm to obstinacy, with a dainty exclusiveness that was extremely flattering, and that somehow he came to like, to enjoy with a certain pride.

As for Madame Lepelletier, she was rather amused at first to have her advances persistently repelled, her tempting bonbons refused, and though she was not extravagantly fond of children, she resolved to conquer this one's diffidence or prejudice, she could not quite decide which.

One day, nearly at the close of their journey, she teased Cecil by her persistence until the child answered with some anger.

"Cecil!" exclaimed Mr. Grandon, quickly.

The pretty child hung her head.

"Go and kiss Madame Lepelletier and say you are sorry. Do you know that was very rude?" said her father.

"I don't want to be kissed. I told her so," persisted the child, resolutely.

"It is such a trifle," interposed madame, with a charming smile. "And I am not sure but we ought to train little girls to be chary of their kisses. There! I will not see her teased." And the lady, rising, walked slowly away.

"Cecil!" the tone was quietly grave now.

The large eyes filled with tears, but she made no motion to relent.

"Very well," he said. "I shall not kiss my little girl until she has acted like a lady."

Cecil turned to Jane with a swelling heart. But an hour or two afterward the cunning little thing climbed her father's knee, patted his cheek with her soft fingers, parted the brown mustache, and pressed her sweet red lips to his with arch temptation.

He drew back a trifle. "Do you remember what papa said, Cecil? Will you go and kiss madame?"

The lip quivered. There was a long, swelling breath, and the lashes drooped over the slightly flushed cheeks.

"Papa doesn't love me!" she uttered, like a plaint. "He wouldn't want to give away my kisses if he did."

He took the little face in his hands, and said with a traitorous tenderness, "My little darling, I _do_ hate to lose any of your kisses. You see you are punishing me, too, by your refusal. I think you ought to do what is right and what papa bids you."

"But I can't love to kiss her." And there was a great struggle in the little soul.

"But you _can_ be sorry that you were rude."

The entreaty in the eyes almost melted him, but he said no more. She slipped down very reluctantly, and went across to where madame was playing chess.

"I am sorry I was rude," she said slowly. "I will kiss you now."

"You are a darling!" But for all that Madame Lepelletier longed to shake her.

Her father received her with open arms and rapturous caresses. She gave a little sob.

"You won't ask me again!" she cried. "I don't want anybody but just you, now that Auntie Dora is away."

"And I want you to love me best of all. Heaven knows, my darling, how dear you are!"

He spoke the truth. In this brief while he had grown to love her devotedly.

Madame Lepelletier was very sweet, but she did not consider it wise to rouse the child's opposition, since no one else could beguile favors from her.

Before they reached New York she had allowed herself to be persuaded to go at once to Grandon Park, and Floyd telegraphed, a little ambiguously, used as he was to brief announcements. Madame Lepelletier had made a half-resolve, piqued by his friendly indifference, that he should own her charm. She would establish a footing in the family.

And now, in the quiet of the guest-chamber, where everything is more luxurious than she has imagined, she resolves that she will win Floyd Grandon back. She will make the mother and sisters adore her. She has not been schooled in a French world for nothing, and yet it was not a very satisfactory world. She will have more real happiness here; and she sighs softly as she composes herself to sleep.

Floyd Grandon kisses his darling for the last time, then shutting his door, sits down by the window and lights a cigar. He does not want to sleep. Never in his life has he felt so like a prince. He has this lovely house, and his child to watch and train, and, mayhap, some little fame to win. He makes no moan for the dead young mother in her grave, for he understands her too truly to desire her back, with all her weakness and frivolity. He cannot invest her with attributes that she never possessed, but he can remember her in the child, who shall be true and noble and high of soul. They two, always.

Laura has fallen asleep over visions of bridal satin and lace that are sure now to come true, but Gertrude tosses restlessly and sighs for her lost youth. Twenty-nine seems fearfully old to-night, for the next will be thirty. She does not care for marriage now; but she has an impending dread of something,--it may be a contrast with that beautiful, blooming woman.

"For I know she will _try_ to get Floyd," she says, with a bitter sigh.

This fear haunts the mother's pillow as well. Many aims and hopes of her life have failed. She loves her younger son with a tender fervor, but she does not desire to have the elder wrested out of her hands, and become a guest in the home where she has reigned mistress.

Truly they are not all beds of roses.


CHAPTER III.

"Let the world roll blindly on, Give me shadow, give me sun, And a perfumed day as this is."

It is hardly dawn as yet, and the song of countless robins wakes Floyd Grandon. How they fling their notes back at one another, with a merry audacity that makes him smile! Then a strange voice, a burst of higher melody, a warble nearer, farther, fainter, a "sweet jargoning" among them all, that lifts his soul in unconscious praise. At first there is a glimmer of mystery, then he remembers,--it is his boyhood's home. There were just such songs in Aunt Marcia's time, when he slept up under the eaves of the steeply peaked roof.

The dawn flutters out, faint opal and gray, then rose and yellow, blue and a sort of silvery haze. It does not burst into sudden glory, but dallies in translucent seas, changing, fading, growing brighter, and lo, the world is burnished with a faint, tender gold. The air is sweet with dewy grasses, the spice of pines, rose, and honeysuckle, and the scent of clover-blooms, that hint of midsummer. There is the river, with its picturesque shores, and purple blue peaks opposite; down below, almost hidden by the grove, the cluster of homes, in every variety of beauty, that are considered the _par excellence_ of Grandon Park. Mrs. Grandon would fain destroy the grove, since she loves to be seen of her neighbors; but Floyd always forbade it, and his father would not consent, so it still stands, to his delight.

"If this is the home feeling, so eloquently discoursed upon, it has not been overrated," he says softly to himself. "Home," with a lingering inflection.

"Papa! papa!" The fleet bare feet reach him almost as soon as the ringing voice. "I was afraid you were not here. Is this truly home?"

"Truly home, my darling."

He lifts her in his arms, still in her dainty nightdress, and kisses the scarlet lips, that laugh now for very gladness.

"Can I stay with you always?"

"Why, yes," in half surprise. "You are the nearest and dearest thing in all the world." Yes, he is quite sure now that he would rather part with everything than this baby girl he has known only such a little while.

Then he stands her on the floor. "Run to Jane and get dressed, and we will go out on the lawn and see the birds and flowers."

While she is engaged, he gives a brush to his flowing beard and slightly waving hair that is of a rather light brown, and puts on a summer coat. A